The Pacific Monthly/Volume 14/Number 1/Impressions

by Charles Erskine Scott Wood

IMPRESSIONS

By CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD

Every law which meddles with trade is a blunder or plunder.

Russia

It is said the Czar has issued an ukase making Trepoff dictator and has prohibited any meeting of the Zemstovs and any agitation for Constitutional government.

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. There need have been no English revolution if only there could have been English evolution. But Charles obstinately adhered to what he believed his God-given prerogatives and lost his head, and the evolution came through bloody revolution. The Archbishops, the Bishops, the Clergy, supported the Divine Eights of the Crown, and their preachings and teachings made Charles more obstinate. Louis XIV, Louis XV, and even Louis XVI, though he cut but little figure in the already breaking tempest, adhered to their Kingly special privilege, and in this were maintained by cardinal, archbishop and abbe. The old gentleman with the unspellable and unpronounceable name, who is the Grand Metropolitan or Chief Synod or Pope of the Greek Church, stiffens the neck of the Czar against all reform, against every change in the "Godgiven" and very enjoyable special privileges of the ruling classes, and notwithstanding the fine leaven of Constitutional government which is working all over Europe, it is probable that the Russian lump will be leavened only with blood, as were England and France.

Whipping Post

Oregon has established the whipping post for wife-beaters. Certainly wife-beaters deserve beating of some kind, but as I read of the first chastisement—the observing crowd, the bared back, the skin gradually welling out its blood, the groans of the victim—I wondered if in the creation of so brutalizing a drama we were not paying a high price for the cure. Whether the public was not being hurt more than the back of the man brute. Still that cannot be, for this is a law—and the Law is all wise, without fault.

I thought, too, what a soothing effect this would have on the lower nature of the man, and how it would tend to make him return home to love the wife who had testified against him. As I understand the case, he had deposited his wages with her, and because she would not give them back to him, he beat her and struck her in the face and bruised her badly. So far as he is concerned, I am not wasting any sympathy, but I am wondering how his being beaten and then turned loose with a lacerated back will tend to elevate public morals or increase happy homes, or even prevent wife-beating.

The Japanese Naval Victory

This is another argument in favor of Molinari 's theory that war will cease and international arbitration and an international police system will come because war is too expensive. A battleship costs about four millions, and it becomes a useless waste, if a quarter of a million dollar torpedo-boat can put the battleship to sleep in three minutes.

Interstate Protective Tariff

If it were not for the interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution we would surely have interstate protective tariff, in spite of the fact that freedom of commerce among the states has been one of the elemental causes of our progress as a nation. Formerly stove peddlers and wagon peddlers went through the rural districts of Idaho and Oregon and sold good stoves and good wagons at prices lower tlmn those fancied by the country store. To buy good stoves and wagons cheaply was a benefit to the farmer, but that doesn't count. He is only a victim. So the Legislatures of Idaho and Oregon, representing the country store and the local dealer, passed laws putting such an outrageous tax on the stove and wagon peddlers as to put them out of business. But the Farmer is still patient. Job was a farmer.

Charles Byron Bellinger

I would be glad to think when I am dead that some one would say of me: He was a kindly man. He loved Justice. He hated oppression. He was sympathetic. He was charitable to the erring. Such a man was Judge Bellinger. A brilliant lawyer, an able and upright judge. A genial friend with a large sense of humor and a large store of pity. And yet his greatest quality as judge and as a man was his sympathy with all men. All men to him were brothers. He was a rare man.

Frenzied Finance

That "Frenzied Finance" is not suicidally frenzied the following from the New York American will show:

"Several years ago the National City Bank bought the old custom house from Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury. The price to be paid was over $3,000,000. Only $.50,000 has been paid. The balance was placed to the credit of the United States, but the money remained in the City Bank. The Government always has millions in that bank.

The Government became a renter. It paid to the bank every year $132,000 rent.

Yesterday Mr. Sulzer made a fight to have the rent stopped. He called for a vote, and IT WAS A TIE. Tellers were called for, and the motion went through.

But while the bank charged the Government rent, when the New York tax assessor tried to put the custom house on the tax books the bank said the building belonged to the Government. It saved $75,000 in city taxes by this claim.

The point is, though, that this is one of the finest examples of fine finance. The bank got the property and never let but $50,000 slip out of its treasury for it. It passed the re- mainder to the credit of the Government. It has an average of, say, $15,000,000 of Gov- ernment deposits. It can lend this money at a rate of 5 per cent. The interest it gets for its Government deposits is more than the price offered for the building."

Lyman Gage is now president of one of the "Frenzied Finance" banks. He is an honest man. Given such power as our political system gives to our governing class, and we shall continually be exploited by honest officials and robbed by dishonest ones.

Oregon Land Frauds

Whatever be the result of these trials, the people of Oregon should remember these things:

They really ought not to be so greatly surprised.

The evil is in the theory which lodges in our so-called representatives supreme power over our public domain.

The Senate does not represent the people, but special interests purchase seats there, as if it were a stock exchange.

The House of Representatives does not represent the people, but certain political organizations or machines which work at politics as a business. The people are really nowhere represented.

There are two evils which have always worked a fraud on the general rights, and always will: (1) A power of disposal of the public lands, unqualified and unconditional, which ought not to be conceded to any body of men; (2) the body of men represents really a special shrewd governing class, not the rather ignorant mass of plain people. Not till the ignorant mass perceives the evil and the remedy will the remedy come. The remedy is, I think, less and less governmental power.

A view of Portland's upper harbor, showing one of the largest lumber mills in the city.

A Siwash hop-picker. From a photograph by Cantwell, Everett, Washington.